Well, it was a long time coming and is probably missing things you want, but this should help new users of the product. Support was given permission to release a set of Deployment Samples for the current shipping code. This set is an x64 installation and thus will not run on previous versions of the product. The XML files that it extracts MIGHT work on previous versions, but of course it will be use-at-your-own-risk. (Truthfully, MOST of it should work fine, but we don't have time to test it or recompile for previous versions).

The password is "samples" for the zip file!

NOTE: This is not an official product release! These samples were created by, and released by, Customer Support, not Development, and is therefore not a part of the shipping code, nor have they been through the full Q/A process cycle. The good news is that the impact is very small, because they are samples, and they have been tested by several customers. At the point of this update (5/2/2011), we're releasing them over to Development from Support, so hopefully you'll see them as a part of an official release soon (no, we don't yet have a date for that).

Please do not report up bugs for this to development until they are a part of the product. Feel free to post issues you have here, or even to your support rep, but recognize the limitations we have for fixing things or adding things. This code is released "as-is" for the most part.

Contents:

Several core "tasks" that are used, and re-used in jobs

Prebuilt jobs to perform:

Capture Windows 7 Enterprise image

Initial Deployment using Windows 7

Prepare computer for retirement (incl: disk wipe)

Upgrade or Re-deploy Windows 7 Enterprise to existing systems

ImageX deployments (custom/scripted)

4 New Tokens:

UUID

Computer ID

Serial Number

Task Server

Custom Tasks to:

Capture a Hot Image backup using Ghost (in production = no down time)

Perform offline DISM updates to an image

Automatically configure advance DS logging options

Add the Altiris Agent to an image that was captured without it (performed in automation)

Enable all SBS services on a Site Server, including setting up dependencies

Disable all SBS services on a Site Server

Turn off, or on, UAC (Win7/Vista)

Evaluate a system using DeployAnywhere to determine if drivers are missing.

Manual execution of DeployAnywhere

Token Replacement task (eg for Sysprep/unattend files)

Drive mappings in automation for custom scripting jobs

ImageX

3 New Reports:

DS Computer Lookup, allowing you to filter on Mac, UUID, Serial, IP, Name. Displays all the previous in the results. Default name is "MiniNT" to show initial deployment computers.

Product Keys vs Captured Images, allowing you to compare the captured image you feel should be compatible with a product key, and see the data behind the comparison. (This is actually a portal showing 2 reports that are also included)

In-use PXE Configurations, allowing you to see the jobs a PXE configuration is used in if you're trying to get rid of a configuration but can't.

Empty Ghost package used in the Windows 7 Enterprise install task that can not be saved without a package. A real image must be captured first for use in the actual task/job.

Portal page and 2 Web Components for use in the Product Keys vs Captured Images "report".

How to Use:

Download the ZIP and extract the exe to your Notification Server. It is installed directly onto the NS, though the EXE can be saved anywhere.The password for the ZIP is "samples". It was given a password to allow transfer through email systems.

Run the EXE. The default location shown should be correct for where your NS is. Please do not change the location! It should be installed under your NS folder structure for correct use, not in a custom location.

MOST of the "product" is found under Manage | Jobs and Tasks, then under Samples \ Deployment and Migration. There are also some reports under Reports | All Reports.

NOTE: All items with an * at the front of the name are intended to be modified before use. These may require things like an actual image you captured (vs the empty one we included) or names of servers, or user names to be included. These tasks include descriptions in the tasks of what you need to modify, either on the description line, or in the task itself, or both.

Removal is not fully supported. See "known issues" below. However, no changes to shipping code was performed in this installation, so simply not using the tasks or reports will leave you with the same product that ships.

Known Issues / Limitations in this Release

SOI jobs not included

SOI (Scripted OS Install) jobs were created previously, but it turns out that, due to some task limitations, are not able to be imported and exported to other systems. These may or may not be added in the future when the Samples are made a part of the full product release.

Removal options missing

Removal of the product requires additional work that is beyond that of a simple import of tasks and is not currently included. The product is listed under add/remove programs, and you can run the MSI and "remove" or reinstall it, but the removal only removes the installation files, not the jobs and tasks from the console. If you require removal, you'll have to manually delete the jobs/tasks, reports, empty image, and portal page items. More information on this is available in the KB for the samples.

If you extract the drivers (to where there's an INF, CAT and other files, NOT exe/msi), then you can just dump them directly in the DriversDB dir, each in its own folder. the folder name you create will be used as the "friendly name" for the driver. Look at existing dirs in DriversDB for examples. You can then run the UI once to let it update its database, then close it normally, and you should be good.

DriversDB is in ..\deployment\task handler\driversdb on the NS and the site servers. i don't know whether the NS replicates any updates down to the SS's, but unless you have a bunch of site servers, this shouldn't be a big deal for you.

If a Connect post helped you out, be sure to click "Mark As Solution" or the "Thumbs Up" button to let other users know about it.

Please leave this "space" for direct comments either about the samples, or requests FOR the samples, rather than how-to's for the rest of the product. Does that make sense? Had this question been in the Forum, then a billion people would see it instead of just those who are glancing at this one.

On the flip side, if there was a need for a script to pull in drivers, for instance... One of the things I've considered doing, but decided against when I looked at the work involved, was a driver collection script/tool for the samples. It's too much work, so I decided against it. I'll wait for Dev to add it to DA when THEY have time. Still, a request like that would be appropriate here.

my current understanding of the PECTagent is that it doesn't do an SMBIOS scrape to get info like serial, model, etc. If that's correct, does this add-on fix that and make token replacement work in WinPE?

Right now I handle it with some fairly simple vbscripts, but it seems i shouldn't have to, as this functionality was already there in the previous version of DS (having basic inventory info available in WinPE). Having it available made me able to accomplish a lot more with less hassle while in PE when comparing 6.x to 7.1.

Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but this is a huge issue for us that's slowed down development significantly.

If a Connect post helped you out, be sure to click "Mark As Solution" or the "Thumbs Up" button to let other users know about it.

Soooo, essentially a generic replacement for what you aleady have. No, the product itself has not had that feature added to it yet.

As a slightly better answer, let me explain it this way.

The samples are ... samples of how to use the product as currently designed and do not add any functionality beyond that. Obviously, there is added functionality because we created some scripts for you, but they're still just scripts using a normal existing script task. New functionality is only being added through feature requests, and then the samples would be modified to reflect the new functionality.

Perfect example:

I'm currently testing an ImageX script. Does DS support ImageX? Not really, though you can do it. Did 6.9? Uh, sort of. It had a script like the one I'm making. However, in reviewing the sample ImageX script in DS 6.x, I realized it calls BCDEdit, which we have a task for, so I pulled that out of the batch file and called the task instead. It also does a partition set via cmd script, but we have a partition task, so I pulled that portion of the script. As the product changes, we'll change how we do things in our samples, but the samples only reflect current functionality.

So I'm assuming you want more than that. Can you be more specific of what you need? If you look at the shared tasks, you'll see a very simple partition disk job we use for the SOI of Windows 7.

As for a SOI of XP, it's almost identical to the one for Win7. I'm not quite sure of the value-added for making samples for products that, though still used in some environments, are almost out-of-support by Microsoft. The vast majority of installations today are Windoes 7, which is why I focused on that. I'll consider the XP option though.

Management of Drivers? I'm not sure I follow you here. DeployAnywhere (DA) is our driver-management tool and the functionality of DA is already included in many of our built-in tasks. Additionally, I have a script for a manual-run of DA in case the built-in or "attached" tasks don't work the way you want them to. So, I'm not quite sure what we're missing.

I did a LOT of hunting, and there's no realistic way to fix the SOI task because of the error checking they built into the task, along with some weird ways associated resources are getting created, so I'm going to pull it. Sorry folks. I'll add in the ImageX one though, for whatever it's worth. It's just a script.

You can find the downloadable file next to the green arrow at the bottom of the post. The formatting of the page was temporarily messed up - that's fixed now and it's more obvious where the attached file is.

The project I support has a requirement to capture an image from a Dell M6400 or M6500 Laptop with Win7 Pro, deploy that to another computer, sysprep the image on the new computer and then deploy that image to 125+ M6400 and M6500 laptops on a regular basis.

To date I have not been successful. I can run the sysprep on the laptop from the MS directory then capture the image and push that image back out. But it does not set the name correctly or rejoin the computer to the domain.

Also I have run into an issue that just capturing an image from a computer will corrupt the Agent.

Are you trying to copy default user info using copy profile? If so, dont boot into audit mode. this caused a lot of problems for me. Just enable admin account and do your changes.

Also, you shouldn't need to touch sysprep on the computer itself - use "prepare for image capture"

if that doesn't work, I'd try same steps but don't use win7 SP1 since symantec doesn't officially support it yet (I had weird join domain issues when using SP1, but it may have been also because I was doing captures in audit mode).

Also, how are you trying to rename computers (I'm looking for tips on this).. thanks

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Don't forget to mark posts as helpful if they are, and mark answers as solutions.

Another version of this product is already installed. Installationof this version cannot continue. To configure or remove the exisiting version of this product, use Add/Remove Programs on the Control Panel.

I have looked in Add/Remove Programs to uninstall pervious version, but Deployment Samples was not installed. I know I did download Deployment Samples for version 7.0, but not for 7.1.

That's it. We simply wanted to make it easier. However, if the installer isn't working for ANY reason, simply run the install manually. For that matter, WHERE you store the xml files is not relevant, so long as you can access them with aexconfig.

So I "think" I've gotten these installed correctly, but I'm unable to then use the new tokens supposedly installed.

I can execute the sample script "Test to Verify Task & Token Functionality" just fine. Return the name of my task server just as it is supposed to.

My issue, then when i try to create my own script using the same %taskserver% token, I get failures, wish errors such as "file path does not exist". I'm just doing simple things like trying to copy a folder full of file from my task server to a PC being deployed. So I'm using a path similar to \\%taskserver%\source to "c:\destination".